Collections

The John T. Durang papers consist of general orders received by Mr. Durang during his military career in the Pennsylvania National Guard and Infantry Regiments, as well as correspondence regarding reconstruction in North Carolina.

The bulk of the John T. Durang papers consists of general orders. Capt. Durang appears to have saved every one he ever received, but this collection contains only those winnowed from an immense stack of such documents. The correspondence is very slender, though it is of considerable interest. While there is virtually no war-time correspondence at all, the value of the collection lies in the series of letters written by Durang's cronies from the Vetereans Reserve Corps who were involved in both reconstructing the Union and in pushing forward the Freedmen's Bureau. The several letters written from government-run plantations in North Carolina during the early reconstruction period offer a perspective on the progress of race and labor relations there, as well as on the work of the Bureau.

There are several items in folders 27, 28, 30 and 33 relating to the performance of the National Guard during the great railroad strike of 1877, when they shot into the crowd of strikers, killing several. The collection includes an unusual three-page printed document describing the events of the shooting, as well as some printed orders and documents relating to the aftermath.

The Joseph F. Field papers are primarily composed of letters from Field to Kittie Chapman, his fiancé and later wife, while Field served with the Union Army. The letters document Field and Chapman's relationship and the effects of the war on that relationship.

Twenty-six of the 40 letters in this collection were written by Joe Field to his fiancé/wife, Kittie, with the balance including nine documents that Field acquired while adjutant for the regiment, one letter from Kittie to Joe, and two letters from other women to Kittie.

Field's letters contain little war news outside of some discussion of the conditions where he is encamped. In many letters, in fact, it is difficult to detect that a war is even going on. Field's letters are intensely focused on his relationship with Kittie, and are generally lighthearted and playful in tone. The war creeps in at the edges that the relationship defines: it is the war that separates the two, the war that affects the lives of their relatives and friends. For this reason, the collection is most likely to be of interest for the study of the effect of war and separation upon one couple's relationship.

Among the more interesting, specifically war-related, aspects of Field's letters are descriptions of various social activities and camp life, attitudes toward officers, and an account of a soldier who was accidentally poisoned by drinking a bottle of liniment that he had mistaken for alcohol. Field's attitudes toward civilians can be very interesting, as well, as he can be quite favorably disposed toward them. The citizens of Norfolk were particularly pleasant to Field and his company, though Virginia women, he wrote, were "too fancy" for his tastes, and the "native" women tended to shutter themselves in their houses, never showing themselves in public. At the end of the war, Field wrote that the Colonel intended to bring a 14 year-old white slave boy he had found to the north and educate him as a missionary, with the intention of seeing the boy return to the south later to spread the gospel. Field's attitude toward African-Americans was less benevolent, and his reaction to the enlistment of African-American soldiers, in particular, is worth noting. Field writes to Kittie that he hated the thought of the North "trying to raise niggers to do their fighting for them. As though Nigs were equal to your Joe" (1864 August 19), and on another occasion, he joked that he might bring home a freedman to sell as a draft substitute.